How the Armavir Social-Democrats are Conducting Their Election Campaign

Published:Proletary, No. 5, November 23, 1906.

      Published according to theProletarytext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1965,

      Moscow,Volume 11,

      pages324-325.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Atthe elections to the First Duma the Armavir Social-Democrats formed blocs
with the Cadets.Volna[1]commented on this at the time and severely
criticised them. The Central Committee of our Party also wrote to Armavir,
admonishing the local comrades for acting contrary to the instructions of the
Unity Congress.

OurArmavir comrades must now have gained some practical experience of what
blocs with the Cadets mean. At all events, in their latest party literature,
they not only refrain from advocating blocs with the Cadets, but speakthe
whole plain truthabout the Cadets. We will not quarrel with the literary
style of the Armavir publications—that would be mean and petty. We shall
only quote the most striking pas sages which indicate the tactics of the
Armavirians.

Wehave before us No. 1 ofArmavirsky Proletary, published by the
Armavir Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, dated October
1906, and issued in 5,000 copies.

Inthe leading article we read the following:

“Letthe Cadets, merchants, government officials, landlords and liberals
dance to the tune of the government, the proletariat will not take the line of
submission and reconciliation.”

“Letthe Cadets, merchants, government officials, landlords and liberals
dance to the tune of the government, the proletariat will not take the line of
submission and reconciliation.”

“Closeyour ranks, vote, capture the Duma! Too long have the lordly
 Cadets sat in the plush seats of the Taurida Palace. It is high time the
 toil-hardened hands of the workers drove out these chatterers and parasites!“Makehaste to secure your poletarianplace in the Duma, to convert it
      from a Cadet talking-shop into a revolutionary field of battle
against the slayer of the people, the accursed autocracy.”

“Closeyour ranks, vote, capture the Duma! Too long have the lordly
 Cadets sat in the plush seats of the Taurida Palace. It is high time the
 toil-hardened hands of the workers drove out these chatterers and parasites!

“Makehaste to secure your poletarianplace in the Duma, to convert it
      from a Cadet talking-shop into a revolutionary field of battle
against the slayer of the people, the accursed autocracy.”

Ina leaflet: “To the Electors”, dated November 1906 and
issued in 3,000 copies, the Armavir Committee writes:

“Thepeople have realised that only by force and power can they take that
which the dying autocracy will not yield voluntarily and which the impotent
Cadet Duma failed to give them.... Let us make this Duma an instrument of our
revolution, let us, through our deputies, install the power of the people in
the Taurida Palace, let us kindle in the new Duma, by the hands of our
deputies, the blazing fire of revolution and fan it with the stormy breath of
the whole of proletarian and revolutionary Russia. Into the new Duma, into the
new Duma!!“...Comradesand citizens! Our future Duma will not be a Black Hundred
Duma, nor will it be a Cadet Duma—it will be a proletarian and peasant
Duma—our Duma, with full power.”

“Thepeople have realised that only by force and power can they take that
which the dying autocracy will not yield voluntarily and which the impotent
Cadet Duma failed to give them.... Let us make this Duma an instrument of our
revolution, let us, through our deputies, install the power of the people in
the Taurida Palace, let us kindle in the new Duma, by the hands of our
deputies, the blazing fire of revolution and fan it with the stormy breath of
the whole of proletarian and revolutionary Russia. Into the new Duma, into the
new Duma!!

“...Comradesand citizens! Our future Duma will not be a Black Hundred
Duma, nor will it be a Cadet Duma—it will be a proletarian and peasant
Duma—our Duma, with full power.”

Irepeat that it would be petty to quarrel with the style or the details of
these appeals.

Theimportant thing is their spirit. The important thing is the independent
policy of the Armavir Social-Democrats, who have been through the purgatory of
blocs with wind-bags and parasites.

Somuch for your hopes in the Social-Democrats, gentlemen ofRech,
Tovarishch, VekandRusskiye Vedomosti[2]So much for the “danger from the Left” mentioned inRechthe other day!

Intothe struggle then, all revolutionary Social-Democrats! Into the struggle
against blocs with the Cadets! The Menshevik comrades will, like the
Armavirians, go through the purgatory of blocs with the bourgeois opportunists
and return to revolutionary Social-Democracy.

[1]Volna(The Wave)—a legal Bolshevik daily
newspaper published in
St. Petersburg from April 26 (May 9) to May 24 (June 6), 1906; 25 issues
appeared. Beginning with No. 9 of May 5 (18), 1906 (after the Fourth Congress
had ended and Lenin had arrived from Stockholm), the newspaper was in fact
edited by Lenin. More than 20 articles by Lenin were printed in
it. V. V. Vorovsky and M. S. Olminsky took part in the work of the editorial
board.Volnawas subjected to police persecution on numerous
occasions. It was closed down by the tsarist government and the legal Bolshevik
paperVperyodbegan to appear in its place.

[2]Russkiye Vedomosti(Russian Recorder)—a
daily newspaper published in Moscow from 1863 onwards by liberal professors of
Moscow University and Zemstvo leaders; it expressed the interests of the
liberal landlords and bourgeoisie. From 1905 it was the organ of the Right-wing
Cadets; it was closed down after the 1917
October Revolution.